Simon Kinberg on why Gambit's tone and character are more important than the plot

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Making the press rounds for X-Men: Apocalypse, producer Simon Kinberg took the time to chat about the X-Men spinoff featuring everyone’s favorite Ragin’ Cajun, Gambit (Channing Tatum), and revealed that the wild success of Deadpool is, in part, responsible for the new delay.

The movie was originally slated for an October premiere but has been delayed multiple times since it was officially announced back in 2015. The last hurdle came a little over a month ago, when we learned that the comic book movie was being rewritten by Tatum’s producing partner, Reid Carolin (Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL), and while the script was being hammered away, director Doug Liman would be helming Amazon Studios' first original movie, a psychological thriller titled The Wall.

Speaking to Flickering Myth, Kinberg explained the reasons why they pushed back the date for Gambit and his answer was pretty interesting in that for him, nailing the tone and character voice 100% right comes before the plot itself. Here's what he said:

“We’ve got to get the script right,” admitted Kinberg. “We just didn’t get the script to the place where we all thought the movie deserved. So we’re still working on the script. We’re very close, actually, to being done with the script. And the hope is that Channing [Tatum] has a couple of movies he has to shoot, but that we would shoot at the end of this year, or the beginning of next year.”

“It’s looking really good,” he continued about the project. “I’m not going to say anything about it content-wise. I think one of the things that I’ve learnt on all these movies – and maybe the lesson was best learned for me on Deadpool – is the most important thing is getting the tone and the voice right. That the storytelling, the actual narrative, the plots are sort of interchangeable and disposable, ultimately.”

“If I ask you what your favourite movies are, you’re not going to tell me about the plot. You’re going to tell me you love this character. And so what we’ve really tried to do with Gambit is make sure that we get the voice of that character right and the tone of the comics 100% on the page. It’s a very unique tone. It’s unique from Deadpool, it’s unique from the X-Men. It’s a heist movie that we’ve never done in these kinds of films before. He’s a con-man. And so that’s really where we’ve spent our time.”

“There was a moment when we were going to shoot the movie at the beginning of this year, and then we felt like it just wasn’t ready. Knowing, hoping, that Gambit is like what Deadpool was – the start of a new franchise within the X-Men universe – we want to make sure we get it right.”

There you have it. Based on Simon Kinberg’s comments, are you guys confident Gambit will get the movie the beloved card-throwing kinetic energy-wielding mutant deserves?